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authorized the release of all the records to a team of scientists and experts. In 1957, General Ferreira had witnessed an unknown luminous object himself when he was leading a nocturnal flight between Ota air base, Portugal, and Cordova, Spain. Three other Air Force pilots flying in separate planes saw the phenomena as well—at first one large object and then four small "satellites" that came out of it. He was aware of the scientific importance of these types of things, and he sent a report on this incident to Project Blue Book, [2] run by the U.S. Air Force. Since the general had some understanding about UFOs, he released all information held by the Portuguese Air Force about my encounter, and a lengthy scientific investigation was launched in 1983 and completed in 1984. The team of experts included about thirty people from different disciplines and academic institutions, including historians, psychologists, physicists, meteorologists, engineers, and other scientists. This investigation involved cooperation between the military and the civilian scientists. I went back to the zone and flew in the path that the object took for its initial vertical ascent at the time I first saw it, which took only a few seconds. Estimating ten seconds, and covering the same distance, we determined that it was flying at over 300 mph vertically. This is not possible for a helicopter, and, more importantly, a human being inside could not survive the g-force from the acceleration required for this 1 Since I could show the investigators on the map the trajectory of the object in its elliptical orbits relative to points on the ground, they could determine its velocity to be about 1,550 mph. This speed is incredible, especially given the maneuvers it was making. I don't know if it w'as from another universe or planet, or if it was from the ground here; I simply don't know. I have never seen anything else like this since. The scientific team studied all the data and the three pilot reports, and after a meeting of all thirty investigators in Porto, in 1984, the group provided a written analysis of more than 170 pages. They did everything they could to understand this case, but they could not find an explanation for it. They concluded that the object remained unidentified. [3] I talked about my experience to the media and had no problems; it was covered seriously in many newspapers and on TV because we had three Air Force pilots involved. Since then, people have approached me to tell me about other UFO incidents, but most of them want to keep their experiences private. Another incident occurred in Portugal before mine. An Air Force a, "4 a aeo4 1 1 ae4 pilot, a colleague, saw a portion of an object behind clouds, which appeared to have two or three windows. He lost control of his Dornier Do 27 aircraft; it began to fall, and he only regained control right above the trees. His comments were on the air traffic controller tape, and he thought this was the end. I was there at the base when he landed and he talked with Jose Lemos Ferreira, the Portuguese Air Force Chief of Staff at the time, upward motion.